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Chapter One
Elijah
An August weekend in New York City, two more weeks before Labor Day. I should be in the Hamptons with the rest of my family, but I just can’t seem to find the motivation to go. It’s not that I couldn’t drag my ass out there. I just have no desire to be on. I’ve been putting on a brave face, as my grandmother would say, so much lately that I don’t know what it’s like to turn it off.
Whoever said time heals all wounds should have their heads examined and told to fuck off. Time doesn’t heal anything. All time does is give you more time to think. Think about what went wrong, all the signs you should have seen, and every way you could have done things differently. None of those things are what Iwantto have in my head. This is why I do two other things to feed a distraction.
The first is being a workaholic. I work so much, and I work so long. My family thinks it’s nothing new. This is what I do. This is whatwedo. When I refer to we, it’s my grandfather, my father, and me. I’m the third generation in our marketing dynasty, as my grandfather jokingly refers to it. Pops, as I call him. AndrewSawyer founded AnSa International with his own two hands and a shit ton of blood, sweat, and tears.
He was born after my great-grandfather returned from World War II. His family had it hard. My great-grandfather sometimes worked three jobs so my grandfather could go to college. Pops had that entrepreneurial spirit at an early age. He always had some idea or angle to make something work. Gran always said he could talk anyone into anything and make them believe anything was possible. Not only did he talk the talk, he walked the walk.
By the time Vietnam rolled around, Pops had married my gran, Evelyn, and had my father. He was in grad school, which also saved him from the draft. He doesn’t talk about that time much. Many of his friends were lost over there. I think that’s what led him to gearing our company toward nonprofits. It was his silent way of giving back in their honor.
My dad, Jackson, followed right behind him. To hear Gran tell it, Dad came out being my pops’s mini-me. He wanted to be just like him. Follow his path and share in his dream.
That leaves me, Elijah Jackson Sawyer, the third generation. I feel like I took the long way around. I fought against the family norm for a while until I found my way. I went to Boston College instead of NYU so I wouldn’t be treated like a legacy. I could be just me. The only place I felt comfortable with the legacy was the fraternity, Alpha Psi. Pops was an Alpha; Dad was too. Being an Alpha gave me an instant brotherhood I could count on for life. Even now, those relationships are still important. Crucial even.
After BC, I got my master’s at NYU, my father’s alma mater. Dad was right. NYU was part of the best time of my life. Not only was it because I was beginning to enter the business fold Pops created, I merged my life with Tori.
Victoria Jensen and I met in our junior year at BC. It was a Halloween party that went way wrong. Some asshole thought itwould be funny to let off a few smoke bombs inside our frat house. That asshole was later determined to be my best friend, Wes Taylor. Needless to say, when the smoke alarms started blaring, the fire department showed up, and the party was over. Tori broke a heel coming down the stairs to get out. I broke her fall at the bottom. That was the first time she looked at me as her knight in shining armor, as she called me.
One date turned into two, which eventually turned into living together. The day we graduated, we drove to her parents’ Alexandria, Virginia, home to get the last of her things. I sat in her parents’ living room, while she was packing her last box, and asked their permission for Victoria’s hand. For all the nerves I had, permission was easily granted. Tori’s mother even gave me her mother’s two-carat, European-cut diamond to propose with. I fidgeted the whole ride back to New York. Even though she denied it, I think she knew.
We walked into our apartment on Central Park West and, after flopping down on the bed, we rolled to watch the lights come up over the park and shine through her ring. Her answer was yes. I thought I honestly was living in a dream. We instantly were grown-ups.
We were the perfect complements to each other. Her dream job was to work anywhere around Vera Wang. There were so many fashion magazines on our coffee table I thought the glass would break. Her creative spirit kept my logical side in check. We were married on June 13, 2009. My parents’ summer home in the Hamptons was the perfect backdrop. Tori looked like a beautiful princess as she walked toward me. Her ball gown absolutely sparkled in the sun. The only things that shone brighter were her eyes and her smile. I always thought her smile could change the world.
I was wrong.
The first five years of our marriage were like our honeymoon in St. Lucia. The city rose like the mountains around it. We conquered every peak together. The waters were still and calm like us until, or unless, we created a playful splash, which was how we made love. Even now her laugh still rings loudly in my ears. The way her legs would slide up and down mine. The little gasp before she came in my arms.
When her smile left is when our world changed. I know the moment it happened. Tori had gotten a job as an assistant to one of the top stylists on the Eastern Seaboard. It was around award season as I said the words that I was ready to be a father. Herwordssaid she was all-in, but her actions said otherwise.
She began working late, later than I did. She seemed to have her period all the time or she was too tired otherwise. We went from having sex every day, sometimes twice a day, to next to never. It should have been a red flag. I ignored it. I had to ignore it. If I looked at it too hard, it might break us apart.
Now I stare at the bed we shared, I don’t see the laughter or Tori wrapped around me. I see something else. When you catch your wife fucking her boss in your bed, it never leaves your consciousness, no matter what.
I was frozen. He turned his head back toward me as he was driving his cock into her. Instead of doing the right thing and leaving, he rolled off and stayed on my pillow at her side, while she confessed she never wanted children and we’d grown apart in what we wanted a long time ago.
I had no words for what I saw or heard. I walked out and sat at the dining table with my head in my hands as he finally got dressed and left. She kept saying the same bullshit monologue over and over again. It sounded so fucking scripted. I finally put my hand up to get her to stop. The next words were, “I don’t love you like my husband anymore” and “I’m leaving”.
She packed two bags inside of ten minutes and was gone. The rest of her things disappeared the next day while I was at work, and her keys were left on the kitchen counter.
That was two years ago. I haven’t changed a thing other than the bedding since she left. I left the walls just the way Victoria decorated them. She was better at it than I ever could have been. I could have changed it, but that would have erased the one last thing I had of her besides the ring on my finger.
So, because of my commitment to my work, people think I sleep in my office. They aren’t totally wrong. Sometimes I do, but it’s getting easier to go back to my apartment most nights. Wes still wants to slash the art pieces Tori bought as well as take a hammer to the tile backsplash in the kitchen. He thinks that going the male version ofWaiting to Exhaleis going to solve something. It’s not.
I started going to the gym every day, twice a day. I didn’t know how to get rid of everything I was feeling. In some of my night reading, when I couldn’t sleep, the American poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, seemed to speak to me. She was quoted as saying, “Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.” That right fucking there was it. I spent the first two weeks of my new gym routine punching a goddamn heavy bag. That only rattled my arms. I needed something that rattled my whole body. That leads me to the number two thing I do when I don’t want to think. I run.
My father jokes I should qualify for the Boston Marathon by now. He’s probably right, but that’s not why I need to do it. I need to because the ache of my legs takes away the ache I feel in my chest still. The burn in my lungs eclipses the memories burned into my brain.
Six point one miles is the distance of the full loop around Central Park. I’ve become well acquainted with every tree, bush,and inch of pavement. I’ve also found breaks from the running when it just gets too physically hard or doesn’t work to get rid of the feelings.
Today it was raining. The water falling from the sky were large cool drops. They felt so good. The only true bummer of the deal was missing my weekly chess game with a man I met on my first run after Tori left. I nearly ran David down behind my tears. I don’t cry often. It’s not something I normally do. In order to make it up to him, I offered to play a game.
His grandson had just passed away, so I feel it was divine intervention that we found each other. I could talk to him without bias, pretense, or judgment. I could also give him the companionship he needed. That’s something that was both selfish and selfless in the same breath. Without David, on this day, I chose my indoor sanctuary. I stop today’s loop at the Central Park Zoo. Some choose to watch the big cats or even the majestic bears. I chose the Polar Circle and my favorite animal, the penguins.
Penguins mate for life. That’s how it should be. That's how I want to be.
